casting the runes

2 definitions found

casting the runes - Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (26 May 2007) :

  casting the runes
  
     <jargon> What a guru does when you ask him or her to run a
     particular program because it never works for anyone else;
     especially used when nobody can ever see what the guru is
     doing different from what J. Random Luser does.
  
     Compare incantation, runes, examining the entrails; also
     see the AI koan about Tom Knight.
  
     (1997-12-26)
  

casting the runes - Jargon File (4.4.4, 14 Aug 2003) :

  casting the runes
   n.
  
     What a guru does when you ask him or her to run a particular
  program
     and type at it because it never works for anyone else; esp. used when
     nobody can ever see what the guru is doing different from what J.
     Random Luser does. Compare incantation, runes, examining the entrails
     ; also see the AI koan about Tom Knight in Some AI Koans (in
     Appendix A).
  
     A correspondent from England tells us that one of ICL's most talented
     systems designers used to be called out occasionally to service
     machines which the field circus had given up on. Since he knew the
     design inside out, he could often find faults simply by listening to
  a
     quick outline of the symptoms. He used to play on this by going to
     some site where the field circus had just spent the last two weeks
     solid trying to find a fault, and spreading a diagram of the system
     out on a table top. He'd then shake some chicken bones and cast them
     over the diagram, peer at the bones intently for a minute, and then
     tell them that a certain module needed replacing. The system would
     start working again immediately upon the replacement.